It's nothing to do with taking a side, it's to do with flagrantly flaunting the biggest taboo in modern military conflict. If you stretched credibility to its highest and decided it was the rebels then they deserve a serious smacking down just as much as if it were Assad. If that means the other side gets a bit of a military tactical advantage then so be it, they get the "advantage" of not being the side to bring WMDs into play.

Arguing with the forum trolls is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird will **** on the board and strut around like it won anyway

While they're both shooting, stabbing, torturing each other with "conventional" weapons we can just let them get on with it. However, when one side plays dirty as it were, there's probably some little known rule that compels intervention. So, instead of a drawn out "can't we all just get along" saga, why not just launch a week of constant, uncompromising bombardment. Give the proper weapons an airing not the ones that cause mild discomfort.

Wow yeah!!!! sounds like a plan, i mean, why not? Lets make sure that Iran and russia get involved, lets give the Muslin fundamentalists even more reason to whip up the poorly educated and disaffected inner-city youth into thinking the attack is against them and their co-religionists.

"Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality" - Mikhail Bakunin

You are not allowed to use subject matter expertise on threads like this! Very interesting read. I remember a couple of chlorine bombs going off in Iraq at the height of secterian violence in 06 but the effects were minimal due to the lack of expertise and delivery capability. This if confirmed in Syria, would require expertise and a robust delivery system to cause such carnage; the rebels do not have that capability. Therefore if Assad had nothing to hide, why would he and his regime prevent the UN Inspectors immediately entering the area to verify what happened?

Sometimes you have to use SME when making a point otherwise it just becomes unsubstantiated opinion

There was also the 2004 incident with a stolen Saddam era Iraqi army chemical artillery shell that had been completely fitted for firing. (Link to NBC article). It had degraded so badly that it was borderline useless plus the insurgents just blew the thing up thinking it was a normal artillery HE shell. It shows that you can have the chemicals and the right dispersal shell but if you keep it for long enough or don't have the right artillery piece to fire it from or training in what to do with the thing from then you'd be as well throwing stones.

Arguing with the forum trolls is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird will **** on the board and strut around like it won anyway

Wow yeah!!!! sounds like a plan, i mean, why not? Lets make sure that Iran and russia get involved, lets give the Muslin fundamentalists even more reason to whip up the poorly educated and disaffected inner-city youth into thinking the attack is against them and their co-religionists.

As I mentioned above, having a few barrels full of sarin components is massively different proposition from having a dispersion mechanism capable of firing it and not wiping yourself out at the same time. Unless you're completely competent in a pristine lab then your components will have shelf lives of days and will most likely be quite useless, the easiest way to combat that is to have a binary distribution system that combines during flight. The easiest way to do that is put it in an artillery shell that does all the spinning and combination for you, unfortunately you then have to design an artillery shell to do the job for you, a standard HE round will incinerate the chemicals. Then you have the artillery side, it's a far harder proposition firing an airburst round that disperses at the right altitude than a standard HE one that explodes on contact.

Unless I've really missed the stories about the rebels having sophisticated military labs, government grade munitions and highly trained artillery crews then I just can't see the rebels having the skills to do that. Yes, they could have chemical weapons and use a few suicide bombers to disperse it but then the casualties (injured and killed) would be in the hundreds if they were extremely lucky rather than thousands.

If I'm wrong then I'm wrong but on these things the simplest answer is usually the correct one: the Assad government fired the weapons from their pre-positioned military bases, in range of the affected areas, that have known chemical weapon stores from their fully surveyed and accurately positioned artillery guns crewed by very experienced gun crews. Anything else is just unlikely and stretches credibility just a wee bit far.

It probably is the correct answer but what if it isn't?

Remember that the FSA was initially made up of Syrian army units that had defected to the rebels, they've also captured military installations.

Now the odds are still with Assad but if we must intervene it would be better if it was on the side that had used chemical weapons, it would be terrible if we ended up backing the side that had used them.

Not to mention that we still don't have any plan. Bomb Syria and then what?

Do we wait for Assad to win and ###### ourselves about how we will retaliate?

agreed. Somehow, even with the best of intentions, it will all go #### up, even more lives will be lost on all sides, and we'll have alienated even more people in the region. And I still beleve we don't really know who is telling the truth or telling the lies.

But for the Russians and Iranians playing pathetic, narrow political games that go against every agreed principle on WMDs we'd already have a UN security council resolution authorising force to get UN inspectors on site regardless of consequences. We do nothing, they win. We do nothing, whoever fired the chemical weapons wins. We do nothing, the little wedge about "we don't really mean it when we say that's utterly unacceptable" comes into play.

Arguing with the forum trolls is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird will **** on the board and strut around like it won anyway

The Russians are very serious about combating Islamic terrorism, having fought numerous brutal wars in the Caucasus region recently, and they will back Assad to keep a lid on it.

I fully appreciate that the Russian are deadly serious about combatting terrorism, especially within their own borders. However, Syria is a very different matter. Their real goal is to prevent the development of an energy pipeline across the Middle East, which would have a massive impact on the Russian economy as they dominate European energy supplies. The pipeline would bypass Russian channels have cripple their economy. I am sure they have concerns about the nature of some rebel formations in Syria but it is certainly not the driving factor. It is definitely not the case with Iran who have no qualms of funding Islamic Fundamentalists or any other terrorist organisation in the world.

It's nothing to do with taking a side, it's to do with flagrantly flaunting the biggest taboo in modern military conflict. If you stretched credibility to its highest and decided it was the rebels then they deserve a serious smacking down just as much as if it were Assad. If that means the other side gets a bit of a military tactical advantage then so be it, they get the "advantage" of not being the side to bring WMDs into play.

Smack on the money with that comment. There is no bigger taboo in military conflict than using WMDs, breaks numerous conventions and would set a very dangerous precedent if not tackled, not matter which side used the weapons.

*shakes head slowly*

But for the Russians and Iranians playing pathetic, narrow political games that go against every agreed principle on WMDs we'd already have a UN security council resolution authorising force to get UN inspectors on site regardless of consequences. We do nothing, they win. We do nothing, whoever fired the chemical weapons wins. We do nothing, the little wedge about "we don't really mean it when we say that's utterly unacceptable" comes into play.

Neither the Russians or Iranians (throw the Chinese into the equation as well) give a flying hoot about the use of chemical weapons in Syria otherwise they'd have acted straight away. They have shown their true colours by stalling at the Security Council whilst the affected areas have been blown to pieces by artillery from the Assad Regime. Only now are the weapons inspectors allowed into the area. As I stated earlier, if the UN does nothing, a huge and dangerous precedent will have been set. The world will be a much darker place.

Is it not for the UN to enter as opposed to the US?

The US, UK and France are not talking about entering Syria; they'll bomb known chemical weapons facilities and infrastructure as a warning that such attacks are not acceptable. It is up to the UN to put boots on the ground in Syria to stop violence but that will never happen as the UN is impotent and nobody (including us) actually gives a hoot about the plight of the civilians in those locations as we aren't willing to escalate the conflict to levels, which will follow.

With the best, thats a good bit of PR, though I would say the Bedford team, theres, like, you know, 13 blokes who can get together at the weekend to have a game together, which doesnt point to expansion of the game. Point, yeah go on!

This is all about certain politicians in the west saving face and being seen to look tough.

I think almost everybody has finally learned the lessons from Iraq and Libya. The Arabs will kill each other no matter what we do. They are violently intolerant of us, the Israelis and above all of each other. The one thing that is guaranteed is that it will result in them hating us a bit more and putting Western lives in danger for no real gain.

I don't think anyone really believes that Syria can be anything other than a genocidal bloodbath and hence we've just given up on it. It's not that we don't care, we are simply jaded (and with good reason).

I think almost everybody has finally learned the lessons from Iraq and Libya. The Arabs will kill each other no matter what we do. They are violently intolerant of us, the Israelis and above all of each other. The one thing that is guaranteed is that it will result in them hating us a bit more and putting Western lives in danger for no real gain.

I don't think anyone really believes that Syria can be anything other than a genocidal bloodbath and hence we've just given up on it. It's not that we don't care, we are simply jaded (and with good reason).

If Parliament votes to intervene in Syria, then we clearly haven't learned any lessons at all.

Also, taking on and reversing John's point: if we fail to act then we clearly haven't learned any lessons at all.

There's a very good reason that every time we've used chemical weapons since the first world war that international outrage has led to tighter and tighter restrictions and international taboo. We can't be the world's policeman stopping everything but we can hold the high line by stopping the escalation to routine use of chemical weapons. If we don't act then we take on the role of international appeaser. If we don't act because Syria is "difficult" then when will we ever act?

For me, I'd strongly prefer if any action was led by the Arab League or similar, even if it's being the lead sanctions enforcer to show that it's not just the western Christian nations imposing our morals on them. If they won't though then we should act, even if it has no UN security council backing.

Arguing with the forum trolls is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird will **** on the board and strut around like it won anyway